By a blest husband guided, Mary came Reader! if to thy bosom cling the pain Of recent sorrow combated in vain; Or if thy cherished grief have failed to thwart Time still intent on his insidious part, Lulling the mourner's best good thoughts asleep, Pilfering regrets we would, but cannot keep; Yet here at least, though few have numbered days That said, "Let praise be mute where I am laid;" Bear with him- judge Him gently who makes known To the cold marble, waits upon thy dust; His bitter loss by this memorial stone; And pray that in his faithful breast the grace Of resignation find a hallowed place. ELEGIAC MUSINGS IN THE GROUNDS OF COLEORTON HALL, THE SEAT OF THE LATE SIR G. H. BEAUMONT, BART. In these grounds stands the Parish Church, wherein is a mural monument bearing an inscription which, in deference to the earnest request of the deceased, is confined to name, dates, and these words: "Enter not into judgment with thy servant, O LORD!" WITH copious eulogy in prose or rhyme Yet have we found how slowly genuine grief Too long abashed thy name is like a rose That could not lie concealed where thou wert known. Nov. 1830 WRITTEN AFTER THE DEATH OF To a good man of most dear memory To the strict labours of the merchant's desk This way of indicating the name of my lamented friend has been found fault with; perhaps rightly so; but I may av in justification of the double sense of the word, that mlar allusions are not uncommon in epitaphs. One of the best in our language in verse, I ever read, was upon a person who bore the name of Palmer; and the course of the thought, throughout, turned upon the Life of the Departed, considered as a pilgrimage. Nor can I think that the objection in the present case will have much force with By one who remembers Charles Lamb's beautiful sonnet essed to his own name, and ending No deed of mine shall shame thee, gentle name!" "Hierologus, a Church Tour through England and Wales," I have met with an epitaph, which is probably the one alluded to above; the passage also contains another rpraph more directly pertinent to the subject. **Catholicus.-How intuitively do our ancestors seem to have been possessed of taste, as in their architecture, so a.so in their poetry! I question whether you could bring forward one instance in the thirteenth, fourteenth, or fiesta centuries, of an epitaph to which the most fastis taste could object. Even that seducer of our Esabethan writers, a pun, was managed by them, always with beauty, sometimes with dignity. I remember two me anes in particular. The first is in a Kentish epitaph one Palmer. Palmers all our fathers were; I, a Palmer lived here, And traveyled sore, till worn with age, In the cheerful month of May, One thousand with three hundred seven, Had been derived the name he bore-a name, And if too often, self-reproached, he felt From a reflecting mind and sorrowing heart Whose virtues called them forth. That aim is missed; Thou wert a scorner of the fields, my friend, But more in show than truth; and from the fields, And from the mountains, to thy rural grave Transported, my soothed spirit hovers o'er Its green untrodden turf, and blowing flowers; And taking up a voice shall speak (tho' still Awed by the theme's peculiar sanctity Which words less free presumed not even to touch) Of that fraternal love, whose heaven-lit lamp From infancy, through manhood, to the last Of threescore years, and to thy latest hour, Burnt on with ever-strengthening light, enshrined Within thy bosom. Palæophilus. Very beautiful indeed! But is that the right date? It seems to me too early for the flowing nature of the verse. Cath.-Weever, who is my authority, gives it so; and I presume the inscription is not now in being to correct him, if wrong. The other to which I referred is much later; and commemorates the munificent London merchant Lambe. O Lambe of God, who sin dost take away And like a Lambe was offered up for sin, While I, poore Lambe, from out Thy flock did stray, Yet Thou, good Lord, vouchsafe thy Lamb to win Back to Thy fold, and hold thy Lambe therein, That at the days, which Lambes and goates shall sever, Of thy choice Lambes, Lambe may be one for ever." p. 70.-H. R.! [t See Talfourd's Final Memorials of Charles Lamb," -H. R.] "Wonderful" hath been And let him grieve who cannot choose but grieve Acknowledges God's grace, his mercy feels, And in its depth of gratitude is still. O gift divine of quiet sequestration! The hermit, exercised in prayer and praise, And feeding daily on the hope of heaven, Is happy in his vow, and fondly cleaves To life-long singleness; but happier far Was to your souls, and, to the thoughts of others, A thousand times more beautiful appeared, Your dual loneliness. The sacred tie Is broken; yet why grieve? for Time but holds His moiety in trust, till joy shall lead That, round his trunk and branches, might have clung To the blest world where parting is unknown. Enriching and adorning. Unto thee, But turn we rather, let my spirit turn With thine, O silent and invisible friend! To those rare intervals, nor rare nor brief, When reunited, and by choice withdrawn From miscellaneous converse, ye were taught That the remembrance of foregone distress, And the worse fear of future ill (which oft Doth hang around it, as a sickly child Upon its mother) may be both alike Disarmed of power to unsettle present good So prized, and things inward and outward held In such an even balance, that the heart 1835 EXTEMPORE EFFUSION UPON THE DEATH OF JAMES HOGG. WHEN first, descending from the moorlands, I saw the stream of Yarrow glide When last along its banks I wandered, Through groves that had begun to shed Their golden leaves upon the pathways, My steps the Border-minstrel led. The mighty minstrel breathes no longer, Nor has the rolling year twice measured, From sign to sign, its stedfast course, Since every mortal power of Coleridge Was frozen at its marvellous source; The 'rapt one, of the godlike forehead, Like clouds that rake the mountain-summits, *This expression is borrowed from a sonnet by Mr. G Bell, the author of a small volume of poems lately primed at Penrith. Speaking of Skiddaw, he says, "Yon dark Icloud 'rakes,' and shrouds its noble brow." These poems. though incorrect often in expression and metre, do bonus* to their unpretending author, and may be added to he number of proofs daily occurring, that a finer perception of the appearance of nature is spreading through the humbler classes of society. His eyes have closed! And ye, lov'd books, no more SONNET. WHY should we weep or mourn, Angelic boy, 1846. [This was the Poet's grandchild—a son of the Rev. John Wordsworth: he died at Rome, whither he had been taken with his mother on a tour for her health. In a letter dated Rydal Mount, January 23d, 1846," Wordsworth speaking of his grandson's death calls him "as noble a boy of nearly five years as ever was seen."-H. R.] 40 |